Apple fixes Heartbleed flaw

While the rest of the world rushed to fix servers containing the Heartbleed security bug, Apple was curiously quiet. It was not that its products did not contain the flaw, its AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule Wi-Fi routers all were vulnerable, but no one seemed to want to talk about it.

Yesterday Jobs’ Mob issued an update to their latest AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule Wi-Fi routers in order to fix a Heartbleed-related vulnerability which would be triggered by Back to My Mac remote access or if the user sent diagnostics back to Apple.

Of course the Tame Apple press has been saying it is better “sooner than later” but what is alarming is that the patch did not come out much sooner. Sites like Ubergizmo appeared to be playing down the bug and implied that Apple would be largely free from it.

“This particular flaw will not allow those with nefarious intentions to steal your personal data or credentials, it could still open some leeway for them to launch man-in-the-middle attacks which will eventually grant access to login pages on not only the router, but also on your computer as well,” the site claimed.

It is sort of true. It will not bother Apple users if they don’t visit any webpages, but we guess a few of them will sometimes do that. The assumption being that Jobs’ Mob’s OS was somehow invulnerable and it was only those nasty Windows machines is so out of touch it is annoying.

To be fair Ubergizmo does say that that people making use of the latest networking devices from Apple, it would be highly recommended that you patch up your hardware without any further delay, but that is only several pars after saying not to worry.